How's the performance of Jackson compared to JAXB in creating XML?

Question

I have to marshall large amount of data into XML format. I am looking into JAXB since it is part of JDK 8 but I am not sure about how it performs with huge data. Jackson XML is another library I come across with which is newer. Is Jackson faster than JAXB in serializing object to XML?

Answer 1

I once wrote an use case to test the performace of jackson and jaxb in serializing and deserializing object to/from xml. test code:

serializing:

/** counter */
private int counter = 10000;

@Test
public void doTest() throws JAXBException{
    TextMsg msg = new TextMsg();
    msg.setToUserName("jackson");
    msg.setFromUserName("hawaii");
    msg.setContent("jack<xml val='Json'>]]>");
    long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
    for(int i=0; i< counter; i++){
        ByteArrayOutputStream xmlOut = null;
        ByteArrayInputStream xmlIn = null;
        try{
            xmlOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            XMLFactory.toXML(msg, xmlOut);
            String xml = new String(xmlOut.toByteArray());
        }finally{
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(xmlIn);
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(xmlOut);
        }
    }
    long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
    logger.info("consume:{}", end - start);
}

deserializing

/** counter */
private int counter = 10000;
    
@Test
public void doTest() throws IOException, JAXBException{
    String xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><xml><ToUserName><![CDATA[jackson]]></ToUserName><FromUserName><![CDATA[hawaii]]></FromUserName><Content><![CDATA[jack&lt;xml val=&apos;Json&apos;&gt;]]&gt;]]></Content></xml>";
    long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
    for(int i=0; i< counter; i++){
        ByteArrayOutputStream xmlOut = null;
        ByteArrayInputStream xmlIn = null;
        try{
            xmlOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            TextMsg textMsg = XMLFactory.fromXML(xml, TextMsg.class);
        }finally{
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(xmlIn);
            IOUtils.closeQuietly(xmlOut);
        }
    }
    long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
    logger.info("consume:{}", end - start);
}

result(unit: millisecond, avg for 3 times test):

type: entity -> xml
JAXB:24716
Jackson:1123
JAXB:Jackson  22:1

type: xml -> entity
JAXB: 31622
Jackson: 1049
JAXB:Jackson  30:1

conclusion: The same task, In serializing, Jackson uses 1/22 time-consume of JAXB. In deserializing, Jackson uses 1/30 time-consume of JAXB.